


this is us (this is love)

by queenundisputed



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:06:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1365100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenundisputed/pseuds/queenundisputed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And this is where I sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is us (this is love)

There only appears to be one bed in the room. It isn’t particularly large, but it could, perhaps, hold two people safely in the warm embrace of sleep. Or other things...should the situation arise. Given that there are two people who feel certain passions for one another standing within the room and also given that they will, inevitably, end up in the bed together, it is a perfect combination of circumstances by which such a _situation_ might arise.

His heart beats faster.

She tosses her boots into a dark corner of the room and yawns; her mouth opens wide enough to make her jaw pop. Much like her yelling—more particularly, her yelling in his direction—there is no logical reason for him to find the noise endearing. And yet.

“I’m completely beat,” she says, removing her red leather coat and throwing it toward her previously discarded boots.

He thanks whatever deity is listening that he is not prone to blushing. He hasn’t felt this way since he was a lad, and even then it had been only in fleeting moments. Passion came and went like the tide. That he could feel it was a constant; that he would feel it...well, that was variable. Then, of course, the sea within him had dried up which meant that its return now was a flood he was grossly unprepared for.

_I’m drowning in you, Swan._

She sits on the edge of the bed, swings her legs up onto the mattress, and reclines against the lone pillow on her side of the bed. He can’t help but stare at her laid out like that.

She looks over at him for a long moment, eyes narrowing.

“Of all people, I didn’t expect you to be shy, Hook,” she says, speech broken by another jaw popping yawn.

He shrugs out of his coat with a raised eyebrow. Her effect on him is staggering, it’s true, but he’ll be damned if he lets her know that when she is so nonchalant about the whole affair. She shakes her head at him, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Then he turns his back on her, sitting on the edge of his side of the bed. He hunches over, hiding himself, as he twists his hook out of its socket.

It’s strange how the sound of the scrap of metal against metal seems magnified, equal to the sounds of their breathing in the small, quiet room.

He knows, from the shift of her body and her breath, that she is moving toward him before her hand even touches his shoulder.

He expects her fingers to be warm, heat radiating through the fabric of his shirt, but they aren’t.

They are room temperature, adding weight to his shoulder but no discernable heat.

His hook falls out of its socket, and he turns to look at her hand on his shoulder, the weight of his hook lying heavy in his palm.

She makes a ‘give it here’ motion with her fingers.

He clenches his hand around the metal of his hook, his knuckles turning white with the pressure.

“Oh come on! What am I going to do, lose it?” she says, beckoning with her fingers once more.

“I rather thought you’d wish to confiscate it, darling,” he replies, shrugging off her hand and swinging his legs up onto the bed in what he hopes is a subtle mimic of her own relaxed pose.

His hook is still clutched tightly in his good hand. She leans over to him and pries it from his grasp. She holds it up into the light as though to inspect it. Instead she watches him out of the corner of her eye, ignoring the dull reflection of light glinting off the surface of the metal.

He, however, is mesmerized by the hook cradled in her fingers. “Does it satisfy you, love?”

She huffs out a breath, a faint almost-laugh. She takes one finger and brings it to the hook’s tip, the pad of her finger ever so gently meeting the sharp point.

It’s as if she does it in slow motion, and his reaction is quite the opposite. He moves at high speed to grab at his hook, knocking her hand away as he does so.

“You’ll hurt yourself that way,” he accuses, sharp and clipped in an effort to hide his labored breath from her.

He drops the hook on the bedside table where it lands with a dull thunk. He stares at it as though betrayed. The hook is just as much a part of him as his hand had once been. That it poses such a threat to her is something he had not considered before, and perhaps it would be better, he thinks, to keep Hook leagues and leagues away from Emma Swan if it keeps her from harm. But then, he has always been self-serving if nothing else.

“I would never want to intentionally hurt you,” he says into the quiet. It is almost an apology though he has nothing to apologize for. Yet.

“Don’t you mean that you’d never hurt me at all?” she asks, a sarcastic edge to her voice characteristic of a woman who has heard the lie before and felt its sting keenly.

“I am not in the habit of making promises I can’t keep, love,” he says, smiling bitterly.

“That’s...honest,” she says, after a while.

“Ah, and you expected a lie, did you not? Pirates do have a reputation, after all,” he says, that bitter smile never leaving his lips. He wants to be different from every other man she has ever met, wants to be _better_ , but they both know that it is an impossible standard he will never meet.

“No, _people_ lie,” she says, and the stress she adds to the word people makes him look at her with renewed hope. He still isn’t quite sure how she does that. “People lie a lot. It’s a good thing when they don’t. Sort of noteworthy.”

“Good?” he asks, latching on to that possibility.

“Very good,” she agrees.

“Right then.” He closes his eyes, leans his head back, and feels the tension leave him.

She moves again, and the tell tale click of a switch heralds the departure of artificial light in the room.  

“Goodnight, Hook,” she says, softly.

“Goodnight, Swan.”

He stays still as she shuffles around, making herself comfortable. He hears her sigh when she finds just the right spot, and he allows his lips to curve into a small, but honest, smile. Her breathing has not yet evened out into the rhythm of sleep, but his slow, careful movements as he finds his own comfortable spot in the bed do not make her tense as he thought they might.

He would like to think that his own sigh of contentment makes her smile as well. He wishes for light for only a moment so that he could see if the traces of a smile linger on her face, but the moment passes. The dark is better anyway; it makes him brave.

He reaches out his hand and searches for hers. It is close enough to his face that he wonders if his breath tickled her skin.

He threads his fingers through hers, and still she doesn’t tense; she doesn’t pull away. He hears her breath catch, and he stops breathing with her. The utter silence of the room makes her feel closer than she really is, and when her fingers curl around his own, he thinks that this might possibly be more important than their shared kiss in Neverland. More important than a lot of things, perhaps.

They both start breathing again.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Together.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this instead of listening in class yesterday. My goal was to write something intense and intimate without ever entering into smut territory because that's basically no man's land for me for so many reasons. So I hope you enjoyed! If you want to give feedback, there's the kudos button at the bottom or the comment button. Either/or would warm my heart! 
> 
> And thank you, as always, to my tireless beta: [homeskull_bob](http://archiveofourown.org/users/homeskull_bob/pseuds/homeskull_bob).


End file.
